Image%20Analysis%20(content%20analysis%20and%20semiotics)

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Image Analysis (content analysis and semiotics)

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

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Outline

1. The status of images in society
2. Compositional interpretation some vocabulary
3. Content Analysis of Images
4. Semiotic Analysis

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Seeing is Believing?
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A New Era of Digitally Doctored Images
Source http//www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening
-standard-crowd.htm
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Source http//www.thememoryhole.org/media/evening
-standard-crowd.htm
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Photoshopped Bodies

• See
• http//photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/
• http//www.iwanexstudio.com/ (under portfolio)

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Compositional Interpretation

1. content what is the image of? Religious,
   historical, literary themes/events
2. color hue, saturation, value/brightness
3. spatial organization perspective, point of
   view, eye level
4. light source

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Compositional Interpretation

• Moving Images
• Screen ratio
• Screen frame open or closed
• Screen plane
• Shot distance
• Focus
• Angle

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Compositional Interpretation

• Moving Images
• Revolving Pan, Tilt
• Tracking, Crane
• Zoom
• Editing
• Continuity cut (classic Hollywood)
• Jump cuts (MTV)

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Content Analysis of Images

• Text Units
• Clearly distinguishable units word, sentence,
  proposition
• vs. Image Units
• Units within a static image are unclear.
• Moving images are relatively continuous.

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Content Analysis of Images

• Categories must be
• Exhaustive
• Exclusive
• Enlightening
• This is not the same as the iterative, emergent
  coding weve been practicing.

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Content Analysis of Images

• (Lutz and Collins 1993)

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Content Analysis of Images

• Code categories
• World location (codes Asia, Africa, etc.)
• Unit of article organization (region,
  nation-state, ethnic group, other)
• Camera gaze of person photographed
• Westerners in photo (codes yes or no)
• Skin color
• Dress style (codes western or local)
• Male nudity (codes yes or no)
• Female nudity
• Technological type present (codes simple
  handmade tools, machinery)

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Shortcomings of Content Analysis

• What exactly do these frequencies mean?
• Does more often mean more important? How do we
  get at important omissions?
• Good coding schemes need extensive piloting,
  trial and error
• Binary nature of codes

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Semiology/Semiotics

• Language is relational not referential
• Signifier, signified, referent
• Furthermore icon, index, symbol
• Studying how signs come together and work to
  encode social meanings
• Denotation (a baby, base-level meaning) vs.
  connotation (higher-level meaning, i.e. innocence)

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Semiotics Method

1. denotational phase, list all elements in the
   image and any accompanying text
2. ask what does each element connote?
3. how do the elements relate to each other in the
   totality?
4. what cultural knowledges are required in order to
   read the material? (connection to wider systems
   of meaning)

source Bauer and Gaskell
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Semiotics Advertisements
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Semiotics Example
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Shortcomings of Semiotics

• Implicit presumption about readers as cultural
  dupes
• Elaborate, perhaps overly complex terminology
• Lack of concern with surrounding social practices
  but see social semiotics

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Summary

• Content analysis on large quantities of
  text/imagery (news media)
• Semiotics on persuasive/rhetorical texts/imagery
  (advertisements)
• Semiotics requires substantial cultural knowledge
• How do we handle what is notably absent,
  concealed?

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Further Reading

• Visual Methodologies, Gillian Rose highly
  recommended
• Williamson, Decoding Advertisements
• Lutz and Collins, Reading National Geographic
• Saussure, Pierce, and/or Barthes